The Director of PREY Talks About the Cool PREDATOR 2 Easter Egg and Why It Was So Important to the Setting
Prey was such a great entry in the Predator franchise, and it told the kind of Predator story that I’ve actually always been interested in. That story was set hundreds of years before the first Predator movie and follows a Comanche warrior who ends up protecting her tribe from a Predator that comes to Earth looking to hunt humans for sport.
Well, Prey had a cool little connection to Predator 2. In the movie, Amber Midthunder's Naru helps Bennett Taylor's Raphael Adolini, a translator hired by the fur trappers. As a way to thank Naru, he gives her a flintlock pistol and teaches her to use it. That weapon is the same 1715 pistol first seen in 1990's Predator 2.
A lot of fans noticed this, but the big question is, how did the gun find its way into the hands of the Predator in Predator 2? Well, chances are, we’ll find out as the story continues in the sequels that will follow. Director Dan Trachtenberg recently talked about the Easter egg in an interview with CB, and he explained that the gun was a big component of Prey's setting, and it almost was cut from the film:
"I was figuring out the movie and kind of had all the elements, and the thing that I was after was to have it set as early as possible. I really wanted to be as far away from a 'Western' that it could be. I wasn't quite sure where exactly to go. And then I realized' The gun! The gun from Predator 2! It has a date on it!' And I quickly ran to look up like, 'wait, what was it again? What was it again?' And it was like 1715. I was like, alright, that's our date. That's when we're going around that gun, that sort of locked it into place."
It almost seems like the gun was the cornerstone of the film! He went on to talk about the process of editing and why it was almost cut, saying:
"Anytime someone on the movie didn't know the reference and in editorial it was like, 'oh, maybe we should lose that. that would allow us to do X, Y, or Z, or maybe it's getting in the way and we should just focus on whatever.' And then I'd say, 'You're right, but the gun means....(They're) like 'oh wait, what is it?' I'm like, 'It's the end of Predator 2.' He's like, 'oh, oh, that's cool. You got to keep it. You got to keep it then.' Anytime anyone lobbied to maybe lose it because they didn't know what it meant. And we found a way to, as you said, incorporate it. So it's not really getting in the way, you don't really need to know, but when you do, you do. And it's cool."
It is a cool reference! It was also extremely important to the story that Trachtenberg was looking to tell. The gun is what sparked the whole setting for the film! I love that.